This piece was originally published in Scalawag, which amplifies the voices of activists, artists, and writers reckoning with the South. You can read the original here. Follow the Greenbrier River down from its headwaters at the north end of Pocahontas County, West Virginia, where the East and West Forks merge […]

“Give me the streets of Manhattan,” Walt Whitman implored, and Eduardo Porter suggested avoiding rural America, maybe especially Appalachia.  Well, I’ve tried both — Manhattan’s concrete for over 20 years — and the mountains of the Blue Ridge and the Smokies and the Cumberlands and the Alleghenies from Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia for most of […]

In the aftermath of the Tree of Life tragedy, where 11 Jewish worshippers were killed by a white supremacist terrorist, the world heard from elected officials, professional sports teams and even national celebrities that in Pittsburgh we, “Love Thy Neighbor, No Exceptions.” Many in Pittsburgh’s African-American community wondered what city […]

In the past few weeks, America has experienced the deadliest anti-Semitic terrorist attack in its history, the largest political assassination attempt recorded when pipe bombs were mailed to prominent members of the Democratic Party, and the murder of African American grandparents by an avowed white supremacist at a Kroger. Two […]